


Mean Old Levee

by Jayne L (JayneL)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s04e21 When the Levee Breaks, F/M, Gen, Hallucinations, Mark of Cain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 11:06:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1646384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/pseuds/Jayne%20L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's on a cot in the dungeon, shackled by his right wrist to a thick iron ring sunk into the wall, when his teenaged self steps out of the shadows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mean Old Levee

**Author's Note:**

> Post 9.22, I find myself wanting a reprise of 'When the Levee Breaks', only this time with demonically-influenced Dean locked up and hallucinating.

Sam and Cas haul him away from Gadreel, and he's snarling, and the Mark is burning, and all he wants is to slash and stab and _kill_ , and then everything goes black.

* * *

Dean's on a cot in the dungeon, shackled by his right wrist to a thick iron ring sunk into the wall, when his teenaged self steps out of the shadows. He's dressed for that date with Robin he never had, for that school dance he missed; he stands just out of reach, looking down at his adult self like he always knew he'd wind up like this. Dean stares back, unimpressed. His head is pounding.

"Remember how being at Sonny's made you want more things than Dad gave you?" the kid asks conversationally. "Remember how good you were at being normal for a while? How you actually thought normal was something you could _have_?"

Dean remembers. He'd wanted, and he'd been good, and he'd thought. And then he grew up.

His younger self chuckles. Quirks a conspiratorial eyebrow. "Man, it's a good thing you went home in the end. We both know how pointless your life would've been without Sam and Dad and hunting. How much nothing you are on your own."

Dean's hands itch for the Blade's bone hilt. He'd gut the kid for it, he really would.

* * *

Abaddon looks like they just dug her up: she's grave-pale, the skin around her eyes purple-grey, her lips chapped and gnawed. Her neck and wrists are ringed in sloppy stitches, and there are streaks of dirt ground into her cartoon-devil t-shirt. "Why'd you do it, huh?" she asks, a plaintive purr, dead breath on his face and cold hand on his thigh. "Why'd you have to kill me? We could've been so good together, baby, you and me and that blade of yours, all slick and wet and red." She straddles him, pushes his back to the wall and _rubs_ , full-body friction, soft curves and brute strength and damn, _damn_ , is she fucking him or fighting him? He can't tell the difference. Can't decide which he wants more.

She kisses him, or bites him, and the Mark sends flashover heat to each of his nerve-ends, or maybe she does. Dean bares his teeth under her grin.

* * *

Cas stands above him as he was when he blew into that barn, as he was when he crashed Dean's dream of Bobby's kitchen: in his old trenchcoat, his crooked tie, his ill-fitting suit; humming with power and distance and barely-checked wrath. Not Cas; _Castiel_. The shadow of his wings flickers across the wall behind him, arched and forbidding. "I don't understand why anyone thought you were worth the trouble of an incursion into Perdition," he says, without any particular inflection. "Had I not had my orders, I'd have left you there to rot. It would have saved everyone a great deal of effort, you included." He stares down at Dean clinically, as if Dean were a bug, or a grain of dirt, or a fleck of shit. "You try so hard to deserve to go back."

* * *

Dean's tearing his nails on the rusty iron ring, straining his arm and pulling, _pulling_ , but it won't budge, and Sam's not going to help because Sam's too busy telling him how disappointed he is in him. Wondering how he ever managed to re-acclimate to the world after Hell, after Purgatory; if he ever did. If he even could. "You've always had this--this thing inside you, Dean," he says, all earnest eyes and honest tone, "this edge. This...cruelty. Even when we were kids, I saw it in you. In the way you held onto me. It scared me. Still does. Why do you think I could never love you the way you loved me? Why do you think I keep trying to get away? That part of you, I know it's there, and I just--I know it's not right. You're _not right_ , Dean. I've always known how wrong you are."

Dean's torn his fingertips raw, his blood's smeared all over the ring and the chain and the wall, and the fucking thing _won't budge_.

* * *

"I know I was hard on you, Dean," his dad says, hunkered down next to him and looking him square in the eye. His hand is a broad, warm weight on Dean's shoulder. His eyes are his own. "But everything I did, I did so you could grow up strong. So you'd be able to make the hard choices, to do what has to be done." With his other hand, he points at the ragged wine-stain Mark on Dean's arm. "That was a hard choice, son, but you made it, and it's made you stronger. You're a good soldier, Dean." He smiles. "I'm proud of you."

* * *

Dean's visitors dry up. He's alone with his exhausted thoughts and his uncontrollable shaking and his marrow-hungry _needwantkill_ when the locked door swings gently open and his manacle breaks down the seam.

When he staggers out of the dungeon, stiff and wary, Crowley's waiting for him with the Blade.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'When the Levee Breaks'. (The song, not the ep.)


End file.
